finding her feet – faute de mieux

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Susanna, sixteen and sweet as honeyloved a boy in her Spanish class.Cute he was, hadn’t much money,but soon exchanged rings of brass.Features fine, manners he lacked many;soon into his grave she let him pass!

A pleasant gentleman made her stopat his backyard daily where his roses grew.He too watched, shyly, at her coffee shoppretty Susanna who was nearly twenty-two.Married when, in a letter, the question popp’dbut his laconic love made poison bid him adieu!

Touring the world, she met a rich man;talkative, humorous, a handsome Dutch.A man of many hobbies – he wrote,swam,ran…He loved to talk – of his hobbies and such;She wedded him when they visited Japan;also, aptly silenced him as he talked too much!

Forty and pretty, love she did crave;found a doctor, her suitor, lovable for sure.After marriage, more and more love he gave,said often, “For my sadness, it’s the cure…”till the day she plonked him into his grave.She thought his love too selfish to endure!

For a very brief period, she married a professor-a scientist, genius, unselfish, naive-for he said, “Marry me now,” in a puerile mannerand waited very long, from husband one to five.At the end of a month, she, with an electric driller,bored him to death – as he did, in a way, when alive!

The last of her husbands, but not the least-he loved her in a way she hadn’t known before…Sixty, as old as she, handsome, was a holy priest;Prince Charming was he, the stuff of folklore.Not a day into wedlock he was among the deceased…because true love they finally got; and so, she too was no more!

P.S. The inspiration to write on this particular subject came from the title of one of Ruskin Bond’s short stories, ‘Susanna’s Seven Husbands’, on which the yet to be released Bollywood flick, ‘7 Khoon Maaf’ is supposedly based. Though I don’t know a single detail further about the short story as such, I picked up hints from the promos of the film (of it being a dark comedy, of there being murders of husbands etc. ) to conjure up this amateurish play of words to convey my own imagination of a dark story about Susanna’s seven husbands.

P.P.S. Happy Valentine’s Day. This is the primary inspiration to write about love. It had to be dark because it’s my blog and today I celebrate the first anniversary of my blog.

For your convenienceand mine, I amkind and sensitive at times, justenough to make you believe that

friends like me arerare. That’s why you can’t make out whenIbegin toexploit you and it is when you begin tonotice, that I defend myself, say you exploited me,dump you like I planned andsoon become a fake friend of someonehapless and rare like you were, whilein the meantime you become like me;perhaps that’s why fake friends are not uncommon.

Love is like a little bird on a rainy day; it finds shelter in a tiny nook carved in the grand design of a building or formed in a tree by the arrangement of leaves and cloistered branches; it remains well out of our sight for we care little about dusty nooks in brick walls or tiny gaps under eaves when the sky comes pouring down and forces us into our own big shelters built of cement and stone, or the foliage in the garden that we had carefully pruned and grown. The birdie shows up, and sings a sweet love song at our windowsill once the rain is gone and the sun is out… but it is not the little bird on a rainy day anymore.

P.S. Not one of my best-loved poems when I was in school but somehow remained in my memory for a long time after I left school and entered college…and then, in a much-delayed, emotionally-charged moment of epiphany, I finally began to realize the essence of the poem and am still awaiting complete realization; the feminist thought in this one is unique…

Twas on a lofty vase’s side,
Where China’s gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.

Her conscious tail her joy declared;
The fair round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,
Her coat, that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,
She saw; and purred applause.

Still had she gazed; but ‘midst the tide
Two angel forms were seen to glide,
The genii of the stream:
Their scaly armor’s Tyrian hue
Through richest purple to the view
Betrayed a golden gleam.

The hapless nymph with wonder saw:
A whisker first and then a claw,
With many an ardent wish,
She stretched in vain to reach the prize.
What female heart can gold despise?
What cat’s averse to fish?

Presumptuous maid! with looks intent
Again she stretched, again she bent,
Nor knew the gulf between.
(Malignant Fate sat by and smiled)
The slippery verge her feet beguiled,
She tumbled headlong in.

Eight times emerging from the flood
She mewed to every watery god,
Some speedy aid to send.
No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred;
Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard;
A favorite has no friend!

From hence, ye beauties, undeceived,
Know, one false step is ne’er retrieved,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters, gold.

P.S. This poem was part of my ICSE school curriculum, taught in 8th grade…and is one of my favorite poems.